I already built Conina as a follower, but didn't place her in the game world.

I'm considering putting her in the Sleeping Giant in Riverwood, so potential Nijels can find her early in the game.

My Nijel has just started Lakevoew Manor, and she saw the small house and thought it would be perfect as a hairdressing salon, especially as the main house behind it can have an alternative entrance from any balcony. So I'm thinking for Lakeview only, take away the Entryway option, and replace with Salon.

So what equipment would a Tamriel hairdressing salon contain? Chair for the customer with plenty of space around it Large bowl and jug for washing, but what else? Large mirrors seem to be unknown. Small ones would be rare, too, and the game engine doesn't offer a reflective surface for one.

I'm not sure if the scripting will work yet, but I leapt into the CK and did a layout, subject to change.

Here's a screen shot from the CK preview window, so you can see the outside of the front wall. There's very little clutter at present, as much of it will probably be custom, such as brushes, combs, scissors, shampoo and conditioner etc. The workbench for furnishing it will go when completed, but I have it there so I don't place anything to conflict.

The idea is that the Lakeview house will lose the "Entryway" option, and get "Salon" instead. That way you can build the small house and use it as before, but clear and re-decorate when you have the larger part done. It would make sense to have the home part entered via a second entrance, but the balcony options (bedroom, storeroom, armory) provide that already. I did think of requiring one of those, but it's an extra complication that's not needed.

And I need towels. I'm sure one of the bathing mods has those - need to go hunting.

However, that does remind me that the scissors will need reflective mapping (cube map and mask) so they're properly shiny.

I might even try a really shiny hand-mirror that would be too small to see much. You only get a cubemap (baked in) reflection, so no face possible, but with a cubemap of the room it's in, it might look OK. I note that ESO has established that hand-mirrors, at least, have existed for centuries before Skyrim. They are likely the polished metal plate kind, rather than back-silvered glass.

However, that does remind me that the scissors will need reflective mapping (cube map and mask) so they're properly shiny.

I might even try a really shiny hand-mirror that would be too small to see much. You only get a cubemap (baked in) reflection, so no face possible, but with a cubemap of the room it's in, it might look OK. I note that ESO has established that hand-mirrors, at least, have existed for centuries before Skyrim. They are likely the polished metal plate kind, rather than back-silvered glass.

Yeah definitely. Like highly polished copper or something.

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"Family is an odd thing, is it not? Defined by blood, separated by blood, joined by blood. In the end, it's all just blood."-Dhaunayne Aundae

Now comes the tedious part of altering the scripts, making build tokens, and testing that it all works.

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And Bethesda made it just about impossible. I have managed to butcher the formlists to allow the Salon items at the alternate workbench, and replace the Room1B ref array with my own, but I can't get the Drafting Table to change the remodel item from Entryway to Salon, and I can't make the Remove Salon Workbench work.

The problem is that the design enforces the houses being identical, by having the formlists as properties of the shared building script, instead of allowing them to be properties of the individual houses. I don't think I can have the Salon for Lakeview without doing it for Windstad and Haljaaarchen as well.

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I made some progress, but having to start a new game for each test gets tiring quickly. The construction basically works, although I still have some glitches to iron out. Since the main pieces are working, I can add further clutter as enable children of those.

I'm also making a "lite" version for use after the game is started, which will simply place all the stuff in an small home/entryway if you leave it empty. No workbench, and no construction, but you get a Salon and sign when you advance the quest. My quest can test the stage of the BYOHHouseFalkreath one to know if it's reasonable to do so. That will help me test out the clutter, as I can just copy it back to the other one.

I'm also checking out alternative hairstyles for Conina, and even thinking she might get a script to change it periodically, alternating between elaborate and looser styles, maybe two or three of each. They'd all need around the same hair length to look credible. No player choice involved, probably happens when player sleeps.

Also on the to-do list: making some of the equipment into "weapons" so they can be held in the hand. That needs collision geometry, which is tricky, and usually means borrowing it from another item that's near enough the same size.

Conina now also has an alternate "armored" outfit. Any resemblance to Red Sonja's is purely coincidence, and she's not going to dye her hair. My thought is that there will be a dialog option, along the lines of "don't you think you could use some armor if we're getting into so many fights?" that will make her switch. Thereafter, maybe she switches when you go into/leave town.

That picture was taken from her own game. The "light" version of the mod lets you enable the NPC follower and the Salon furnishings independently, so hers has only the Salon. Nijel (there are several of him) uses the full version and builds the Salon piece by piece.

Making the hairdresser tools "wieldable" has been fun. The common knife and fork aren't weapons, just misc items, but they do have provision for blood decals in the nif's. Weapons have to have 1st person meshes (without scabbards) separate from the weapon mesh. Both have blood decal support. The first person mesh is a static, not a weapon, or a misc item. They all have collision boxes, so I've replaced the mesh in a dagger of appropriate size for now. That's giving me some issues with putting them down, as they don't lie flat or on the right side, or ...

The hairbrush is a particular problem, as the natural way to hold one is with the bristles facing inward, but when held in the left hand, they face out. This is because blades face down, rather than in/out. I'm trying to determine if left/right weapons are supported. Spells, which don't need to act differently, do come in left and right varieties, and I haven't figured out why.

The sticking point with the Conina (full) mod is the control of the workbench for the Salon. When you select "Remodel the House" at the drafting table, I need the Salon workbench enabled in place of the Entryway one, and it's proving reluctant. If I manually enable it, all the building goes well.

The big hassle with this is that it means changes to the properties of a "start enabled" quest, so each time I change it, I need to start a fresh character from the cart ride. Even the initial autosave is too late. And then the character has to "do" a couple of quests for Siddgeir before he can buy the land. Even using the console to bypass things doesn't speed it up much.

The light version, where you console-set stages of a quest to enable Conina herself, or the Salon content, (or both) works well enough. That may end up being the only one I release. I'm using that to fiddle with the cluttering and then using TES5Edit to clone the content to the other.

I've added a bit of dialogue to let the player control Conina's outfit, so she can put on her dress or armour if she's not currently wearing it. The armour is "levelled", with either steel or plate boots, gauntlets (and circlet), as two complete outfits.

The wall shelves may get the "bookshelf/weapon rack" treatment, to allow the player to place statues of Dibella they've collected. The one in Broken Tower Redoubt respawns, so the supply is unlimited, if slow. Others appear in random loot, and there are three quest items (Haelga's, Lisbet's, and the one in the Temple) that could be kept. Several of my earlier characters collected them in the cellar, instead of making the shrines.

I spent a lot of time this weekend trying to get the bugs out of the Conina full version. Since the Hearthfires quests start the game enabled, I can only test my changes by beginning a new game, with all the unskippable cinematics. I was seriously tempted to install an alternate start mod to speed it all up. A run from beginning to Lakeview Salon and Hall built takes nearly an hour, and a third of that is the Chargen scene, with almost another third being Helgen.

I still have a few things to tidy up, but I believe those are all ones that won't need a new game to test them. One is that the shelves are supposed to have display positions for the gold Dibella statues, but the activators aren't enabling with their parent shelf at present. The other is the removal of the Salon workbench, which is parented to the Entryway one that's now below the floor.

And since I got tired of creating a new Nijel every time, I made myself a Rincewind this time. The hat needs some more work, but the re-texture of the college master robes to a faded red has worked out better than I expected. I may add those to her inventory so you can take them once she's recruited. I think I found a player-only setting somewhere, but I don't know if that prevents her from carrying them. I took the hat mesh from a female outfit, so I'm still fiddling with Size and placement. I may download one that already has that work done, and just re-texture it. I want a more Skyrim, less Discworld version, so having "Wizzard" on it isn't in the plans.

And at the end I need to clone some of it into the "light" version for games in progress. That's not BYO, but just places all the Salon stuff at once into an empty entryway. I suspect that will be more popular, as actually doing the work is not for many.

Edit: The inactivable activators turned (sic) out to be the zrot=0 bug, so they're now 1 degree twisted, and working.

I've started to gather the pieces together for a beta release. The stuff I added to the full version (which requires that you start a new game, because it changes the properties of the building quest) is cloned to the light version (which you can add to a game in-progress). I've started compiling the documentation - readme and wiki pages.

It will be for LE first, as you can convert up to SE, but not the other way. It will probably never see XBox1, as I'm losing patience with that crowd. Since I don't have one, it will just be for the versions I run.

I intend to provide Rincewind's hat and robe, and presets for both Nijel and Rincewind, as part of the package. Nijel works with hide gear plus iron helmet, without my making any special outfit for him. Neither would make a suitable NPC, as they were written to be combat-challenged, but you can play them any way you want.

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Rincewind just did Hircine's quest (first time any player character of mine has done so). He spared the werewolf, as neither reward meant anything to him, and rings are light to carry.

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I realised that Conina's outfits were built on the XPMSE skeleton (with all the extra jiggly bones) so they needed to be re-done without, or that would be an unnecessary pre-requisite. So one step back ...

I need to get back to this and finish packaging. Or else I'll start making Smurfette's house a Build Grow Your Own one. (And the thing that's holding me back is deciding where to put the "workbench" - which probably wouldn't be one, but more like the stump for the Bosmer Den).

I've run through the full build version with a few Nijels, and the "setstage" build with Rincewind, but need to take the characters u a few more levels to test Conina's viability as a follower without extra armour. Once you re-dress her, she's just another follower, so I may need to find a way to buff her dependent on retaining her dedicated clothing.